Telengard 2, session 5

As the last few sessions involved a fair amount of seat-of-my pants improv, I decided to plan a short dungeon more in the style, such as it is, of the dungeons of the first Telengard campaign.  In the end, I didn’t need to use it, as the party decided to clear some more houses.  I threw together a few random to stock houses and provide wandering monsters of the streets of Skara Brae, which worked out pretty well. The party worked together and did not suffer any casualties.  The were suitably frightened by a patrol of cyclopskin and eyebats, which they hid from, and they used clever plans to draw some ghouls out of another house and wipe them out in detail.  At the end of the session they set up an ambush, using a barrel of green slime they found in a Gremlin lair, which wiped out the cyclopskin very efficiently.  (I forgot just how fast that stuff kills you — d4 rounds!)  The dungeon will likely get used next time, since two characters have been given quests due to carousing mishaps.

We also had a new player, who Tom, Richard, and I met through my sister.  He’s another returning gamer who hasn’t played in years and he enjoyed the chaotic session enough to want to come back, which is cool.  A couple of regulars weren’t there, which probably made it less overwhelming for him than it could have been.  As it is, he fits in just fine, personality-wise.  The group is now up to seven players, which is a good number considering we all have work and/or family obligations that mean we usually are missing a player or two on any given night.  If everyone makes it, I’ll have my hands full, and I think that big parties must be the reason a ‘caller’ was used so much in the old days.  I might resort to that if we need to. Especially if Marc comes back to the group in the next month or so.  I haven’t heard from him in a while though.

The other gaming-related development has been some reorganization and renovation in the basement, which has opened up some space.  Tom and my dad came over on Saturday to “help” me fix a soffit that’s been drooping and has been propped up by a “lally pole” for the last several years.  It was kind of embarrassing to realize that the thing could be fixed in a few hours — even with an extra trip to the hardware store — and I’d let it junk up up the basement for so long.  Now my wife’s crafting area is well away from the gaming table, and we’ve cleared out a lot of the clutter.   We’ve been slowly trying to make one place for each kind of thing in the house, to cut down on the disorganization, searching for things, and make cleaning easier.  The first step was repurposing the ‘guest room’ to make a play room for our daughter, then moving most of the the books to the ‘office,’ and similar stuff.

I also rigged up a way to attach a 4 x 6 sheet of plywood to the table, which creates a t-shaped table that will have extra seating room and easier access for everyone to the center of the table where the minis get set up.  We’ll see how that works out next time.  I also found a spot to hand an old printer’s drawer on the wall for extra miniatures display space, and hung some posters and swords on the walls, so it should feel more like a finished gaming area rather than a cluttered store-room.